A couple of weekends ago I helped out at Ladies Learning Code‘s Intro to JavaScript workshop. I was a ‘mentor’, one of the large group of devs who volunteered to hang out with some eager learners all day and help them decipher programming in JavaScript. It was pretty awesome, and I can say with absolute confidence that I’ve never felt better about being a programmer than I did (and do) after that workshop.
The previous weeks had been completely insane at work and we were on deadlines that were sometimes physically painful to think about. I had lost an entire day of productivity (one I couldn’t afford to have lost) to trying to decipher an OO JavaScript framework another coworker had built, one that was full of gigantic nested object literals and confusing (for me) references, and I felt pretty terrible about my skills at that point. I strongly considered cancelling on the workshop at least five times and only barely managed to convince myself the night before that it would be fine.
It was, of course, fine.
That’s us before any of the participants got there–just organizers and mentors (note: all photos thanks to the fantastic Peter Newhook!). Yeah, there were a bucketload of us giving up a Sunday to show up at CSI Annex and talk code all day. At this point I was still mildly terrified that I would just somehow forget everything I knew about JavaScript (the thing I do for a living, all day, every day). I sometimes wonder how I don’t explode in a ball of worry.
And there’s everyone (photograph by Breanna Hughes)! I know. So much enthusiasm.
Pearl Chen and Christina Truong led us through a pile of beginner JavaScript and covered a surprising amount of ground in one day, including really great explanations of objects, some jQuery, and some fun demos. After the first exercise I finally relaxed a bit and remembered that yeah, I’m okay at this stuff. Go figure.
There’s nothing like helping someone work out the kinks in their understanding of something and watching them experience a huge epiphany. It’s ridiculously rewarding, and I got to do it for not one but four great ladies!
(Check out my almost-six-year-old Dell in the foreground. Keep on truckin’, old buddy.)
Pauline, Emma, Laura, Shetu–thanks for sticking with it and being so damn excited about learning new stuff. You guys made it one of the best times I’ve had in a while, and reminded me why I love writing code all day–we make cool stuff happen. And thanks to Ladies Learning Code for doing something amazing: making people excited to learn code, excited to say they’re learning code, excited to hang out with other people who do too. It’s a great community. I’m glad to be a part of it.
(Side note: Shetu, the lovely learner on the far right in that photo, actually interviewed me for this Globe & Mail feature after the Ruby workshop last fall! SMALL WORLD.)